Dreams Bigger Than the Night

by Levitt, Paul M.

  “Mrs. Gehrig?”

  “Yes?”

  “I hope you’re the person I want. I’m a friend of Arietta Magliocco’s. She gave me your number. I’m passing through town and thought I would call. I hoped you could tell me her whereabouts.”

  “It’s late! You have the wrong number,” she said abruptly and hung up.

  (Mom, you were right.)

  He returned to the hotel. Before turning off the light, he began to reread Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara, a fitting play for difficult times. But his mind kept wandering. The woman on the phone had acknowledged her name, but had she told him the truth? The Maglioccos were most likely hiding at her house. For a moment, he wished that he could just barge into number 334, look around, and make his escape with Arietta and Piero. He kicked himself for not acting as if he knew Arietta was there and just asking Mrs. Gehrig to call her to the phone. Too late now.

  The next morning, arriving before seven, he waited outside 334 Sixteenth Street. When a man left, he followed him to a hunting goods store around the corner from the Schwabenhof Restaurant, on Twelfth and Teutonia. The shop had the usual kinds of mounted wall displays: antlered deer and elk, stuffed fish, photographs of hunters standing next to a fallen bear, and anglers standing on a boat surrounded by their catch. Two things caught his eye. The first was a framed photograph of an older woman who resembled the picture he had seen in the Magliocco house of Arietta’s mother. Surely this was the third sister, Agna. The second was a document taped to the cash register certifying that Mr. Reinhard Gehrig Jr. was a member of the Friends of the New Germany. The dwarfish round-faced fellow in attendance wore an ill-fitting faded brown seersucker suit that had seen too many washings.

  “Yes?” the little man asked dourly, tugging at his lapels.

  “I’d like to speak to Mr. Gehrig.”

  “He’s currently on the phone.”

  A minute later, a door at the end of the shop opened and a balding martinet, with a paunch and bespectacled colorless eyes, entered, presumably Mrs. Gehrig’s son.

  “Frumpf,” ordered the martial voice, flecked with a German accent, “the toilet is blocked again. See to it.”

  Mr. Frumpf said deferentially, “Sir, this gentleman wants a word with you.”

  Mr. Gehrig, peremptory and probably no more than twenty-five, was already losing the muscle tone in his face, which had begun to sag. His bulbous lips reminded Jay of some Negro horn players. From his pasty face, the incipient Nazi removed his thick-lensed glasses and said brusquely, “Yes?”

  “I’m interested in a pistol, but I don’t know how to go about selecting one. I figured it’s always best to talk to an expert . . . about guns and politics.”

  Mr. Gehrig scrutinized Jay as if taking his measure and replied, “How right you are,” and then asked, “You German?”

  “Wagner. My parents come from Hamburg.”

  “Mine from Stuttgart. If you like, you can call me Reinhard.”

  With this information, Jay decided to take a chance. “My parents live in Newark. They knew a woman from Stuttgart, a Kristina Magliocco. If I recall correctly, they said she died young, leaving a daughter.”

  Mr. Gehrig again removed his glasses, wiped them, adjusted them to his nose, and said indifferently, “I don’t know the name.”

  From his wallet, Jay removed his New Jersey membership card for the Friends and placed it on the counter. Mr. Gehrig reached for it tentatively as if it might bite, and then visibly relaxed. A smile played around his lips.

  “You didn’t say . . . Mr. Wagner.”

  “One can’t be too safe.”

  “Exactly! But why do you ask about her?”

  “We used to attend Friends meetings in Irvington.”

  “That explains why you chose to be so indirect.”

  “In our business . . .” Jay deliberately broke off.

  “Yes, secrecy never betrays.”

  Fearing that they were wandering from the subject, Jay continued. “Now about Arietta . . .”

  Mr. Gehrig reflected briefly and then said, “My cousin. Ach, such a beautiful girl. She’s visiting.”

  “Is there any chance of my seeing her?”

  “Impossible, she’s preparing to go to California.”

  “I trust Mr. Magliocco will be accompanying her.”

  “Of course. Such a close family.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know her Friends contact in California?” Jay said casually, pretending to be knowledgeable about such matters.

  “You’d have to ask my mother. But she and I are at odds.”

  Desperate, Jay took a shot in the dark. “With Mr. M.’s interests, I’d guess Southern California.”

  Mr. Gehrig laughed heartily, the first time he had done so. “You are so right! Movies and gangsters. It all fits, doesn’t it?”

  “Like a tailored suit.”

  Hoping to encounter Arietta, Jay expressed an interest in meeting with the Friends the next day. “If so, where?”

  Reinhard opened a small black book and studied it. “Why don’t we plan to have dinner around the corner, at the Schwabenhof. Say around eight. I’ll bring along some friends, for the gemütlichkeit.”

  “Bring Arietta. It will be wonderful to see her again. Tell her Mr. Wagner sends his regards . . . Richard Wagner.”

  How dumb could he be? At that moment it struck him that she might well remember that name as the one he’d used to join the Friends.

  “I’ll ask.”

  “On second thought, don’t. It’s best to keep our contacts to a minimum . . . until the new order . . . but you understand.”

  “Not a word,” Reinhard said and grinned as if they had just entered into a vast conspiracy.

  “What do you need a pistol for, Mr. Wagner?”

  “Protection. Prowlers and that sort of thing.”

  “Then I recommend the model P-35 Browning. It’s a military pistol, made in Belgium. First-rate.”

  Jay purchased the gun, exchanged pleasantries with Mr. Gehrig, and started for the front door. Had Jay left a minute or two earlier, he wouldn’t have seen the man approaching the shop. Through the window he recognized Cauliflower. Placing his package on the floor, he bent down and tied his shoelaces as Rolf Hahne entered and walked past him. Jay quickly left. His hands were shaking and his head spinning, so he went around the corner for a beer at the Schwabenhof. As he sipped the bitter ale, he tried to sort out his disparate thoughts. Young Reinhard seemed to be in charge; his father, Jay guessed, had died and left his son the store. He wondered if the mother shared her boy’s political views. If she did not, perhaps he could use that as a lever to induce her to put Jay in contact with Arietta. But how?

  He went down the street to a public telephone booth and called the Gehrig residence. She answered the phone.

  “Mrs. Gehrig, this is Police Detective Gerhardt Mueller. I’m calling about your son and his participation in an organization that we have some concerns about, the Friends of the New Germany. I wonder if I could come to the house to speak to you . . .”

  She cut him off. “I have nothing to do with those Nazi swine!” and slammed down the receiver.

  Conclusion: Mother and son did not see eye to eye on politics. Anything else? Reinhard lived at home and probably supported her. The Maglioccos were temporarily hiding at 334, and Mr. M. was parking his car elsewhere. But if Jay waited outside the Gehrig house and Arietta and her father failed to appear, what then? But having no other choice, he parked a few doors away and sat peering over a paper. Around noon, a police car materialized, slowly moving in his direction. Jay guessed that a neighbor had probably complained about a fellow loitering in his car out front. Pulling away from the curb, he drove around town and took in some of the sights: the city hall, a brewery, a small art museum. That evening, he caught a showing of Mary Astor in Red Hot Tires.


  The next morning, he awoke around five, found a small restaurant, ordered some waffles with maple syrup, drove to Sixteenth Street, and parked, but this time in front of a different house. Around nine, he saw the Waterhouse coming down the street. The driver parked in front of number 334. Jay could not see anyone else in the car. Perhaps that was best. He would be able to confront Mr. M. and explain his concerns. One of his legs began to shake uncontrollably. A man with cotton knickers and matching lid exited the auto and briskly strode to the front door. At first, Jay thought his eyes had deceived him. Not until he had a close look at the man in plus fours was he convinced that this fellow was not Piero Magliocco. Perhaps this guy garaged the car and was now bringing it to Mr. M. for his use. Jay approached him. With his heart thumping wildly, he said, “Pardon me, sir, I’m looking for a friend who used to drive this same car.”

  The fellow jerked back his head and squinted as if he could see objects or people only at a distance. “Oh, you mean Mr. Magliocco?”

  “Yes.”

  “A fine old gentleman.”

  Jay wondered about the stilted reply and the adjective. The man looked at least ten years older than Piero, but Jay just nodded in agreement and said, “Will he and his daughter be here this morning?”

  The fellow replied with what Jay could now identify as a slight English accent. “I should hardly think so.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He sold the motor to me, I gathered, to pay for train tickets, and to cover his expenses in California. Agna Gehrig and I are old friends.”

  Jay’s head whirled, and the earth beneath his feet shook. Certain that he had misheard, he asked, “Would you kindly repeat what you said?”

  “Mr. Gehrig introduced me. Reinhard knew that I was in the market for a Waterhouse. It was all rather sudden.”

  “Cal . . . uh . . . fornia?” Jay stuttered.

  “Piero, he had located a job there and needed to leave at once.”

  “But he loved that car,” Jay mumbled to no one in particular.

  “Understandably. A wonderful motor car.”

  “He sold it,” Jay repeated reflexively.

  “Good price, too,” the gent said. “Must go, Agna expects me.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know when Piero intended to leave?”

  “As a matter of fact, I think today.”

  Jay thanked him, darted for his car, and raced to the train station. Leaping from the Ford, he dashed for the platforms. A ticket taker at one of the gates, seeing his anxiety, volunteered to help.

  “I’m looking for the train to California.”

  “Which one? We have two, a morning train that has already left for Los Angeles via Chicago and another leaving this afternoon for San Francisco with a stop in Minneapolis.”

  Having no choice, Jay hung around the station to wait for the afternoon train. When the San Francisco boarding was announced, he stood out of sight watching the gate. Arietta and her father most likely had left on the morning train for Los Angeles. A moment before the gate closed, a man came rushing up, waving a ticket: Cauliflower.

  Using a station phone, Jay called Janice, who said T had taken her daughter to the movies. He left a message: He would be picking him up to take him to sunny California, the land of citrus groves and walnuts and cotton. If T wanted to know why, she should tell him that the two people they wanted had gone to Los Angeles. The woman on the other end of the line let out a low whistle and said, “I wish you’d take me.”

  Of course, Jay had no idea whether the Maglioccos would be staying right in L.A. They could have taken a train there but migrated elsewhere, like Pasadena or Santa Monica or the San Fernando Valley. And yet in light of Mr. M.’s comment that the only job he’d prefer to rum-running would be the movie industry, and Reinhard Gehrig’s reference to Los Angeles, Jay had a hunch that father and daughter would gravitate to the Hollywood area.

  Returning to the hotel, he gathered his belongings. As he drove south to Chicago, he briefly wondered what Reinhard would think when he failed to show. Shortly after crossing the border into Illinois, he picked up a hitchhiker, an elderly man with rheumy eyes, wispy hair and beard, and a large pouch of loose skin under his jaw that brought to mind a turkey gobbler. The man said he needed to cover ten miles and felt much obliged that Jay had stopped for him. The two of them exchanged introductions, Jay Klug and Stine Becker. On his way home from following itinerant jobs in Wisconsin, Mr. Becker explained that his wife and three boys used to travel with him until that proved too costly.

  “Now she and the kids stay with her mother while I travel around looking for work.”

  “What kind?”

  “I’m not particular, if it pays.”

  Traveling through small towns that had little to show for their devotion to the Protestant ethic, Jay deduced from the number of American flags mounted on front porches that army recruiters found most of their fodder in these hamlets, where the out-of-work young men eagerly signed on for regular meals, clothes, shoes, and a small allowance. Although Mr. Becker’s age would have kept him from service, Jay could imagine his sons joining up in response to the local patriotism and the promise of a new life.

  “Do you normally hitchhike to get around?”

  “Depends. If I can, I ride the rattlers . . . freight trains.”

  “I’m headed to Los Angeles after a stop in Chicago.”

  “Route 66. Just take it all the way, from Chicago to Springfield to St. Louis, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, L.A. Before I lost my job to a fellow a lot younger than me and willing to take a lot less money, I used to be a truck driver. I know 66 like the palm of my hand.” Mr. Becker opened the road map that Jay had wedged on the top of the dashboard and studied it. Running his index finger along the black-lined highways made him appear like a man feeling the pulse of a nation. “Hardly a one I haven’t traveled.” Mr. Becker folded the map and leaned his head back against the seat, murmuring, “Old 66. Some folks call it the mother road. I call it the river of rue.”

  The old guy then launched into an amazing aside. “Sixty-six is the path of people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these, the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. Sixty-six is the mother road, the road to flight.”

  Jay sat speechless. What can you say in the presence of such talk? But as he drove, he kept stealing glances at Mr. Becker, hoping that he would lean back and again become reflective. No such luck. At Heywood Junction, Jay dropped him off and continued on into Chicago, retracing the route he’d taken when he had left T behind.

  Janice met him at the door. Jay stayed for both dinner and the night. Over pork chops and sauerkraut, she related how her husband had been in the meat-packing industry and had died of blood poisoning contracted from some contaminated beef. Her daughter, Melanie, sat listening.

  “He stood in a line with a lot of other hog butchers cutting the meat carcasses as they came through. I always worried about the sharp knives they used and the speed of the line. But those things didn’t kill him, some disease did. Even though he wore rubber gloves, his arms were bare. He had a cut on his arm, and it must have rubbed up against the infected slab. The doctors gave him sulfur drugs, but his temperature just kept rising till his body burned up. I asked the Cudahy people for money to help me and the girl. They said no. Without T and some others, I don’t know how I would’ve got by. Lucky for me that Melvin bought this house when he could. Otherwise we’d be living with kin.”

  After washing the dishes, Jay discussed the impending trip. He felt that the leads he had come up
with left them looking for a mote in a sunset.

  T observed that “without somethin’ like the names we got from Mr. George McManus, I think we’re startin’ out on a fool’s errand.”

  “Ignis fatuus,” Jay mumbled.

  “What in the hell’s that?”

  Jay told T the story of a professor he had once studied with, Ralph Cohen, whose vocabulary kept classes breathless. One day he uttered the phrase “ignis fatuus,” and when they all looked blank, Professor Cohen explained its meaning and told them that someday they would have an occasion to use it.

  “So what does it mean, you still ain’t said?”

  “I’ll give you the short answer: a deceptive hope, a delusion.”

  “That’s exactly what Los Angeles is, a dreamland. I played ball there once. The place ain’t hardly real. So why go chasing after the Maglioccos in a place that’s just all smoke and mirrors?”

  They argued until Jay reminded him of Longie’s generosity. The money he’d shower on them for finding Arietta would beat fixing potholes in Newark.

  “Yeah,” T said, “government work ain’t gonna make a man rich, and worse of all, it ain’t even steady.”

  Hitting the road early with only about four hours of sleep, they left before Janice and her daughter awoke. T slipped a tenner into Janice’s purse. Driving south through Springfield, they crossed the Mississippi River, flowing lazy and muddy, entered St. Louis, and continued southwest through a corner of Kansas and into Oklahoma. Neither of them was prepared for what they saw in the Sooner state, where single-crop farming had impoverished the soil, leaving it to utter ruination from the pitiless droughts and the wind. Some people called it the Dust Bowl, but Jay figured a better name would have been the Valley of Ashes.